Summary Of The Sound And The Fury And Absalom

William Faulkner tells his novel The Unvanquished through the eyes and ears of Bayard, the son of Confederate Colonel John Sartoris. The author’s use of a young boy during such a turbulent time in American history allows him to relate events from a unique perspective. Bayard holds dual functions within the novel, as both a character and a narrator. The character of Bayard matures into a young adult within the work, while narrator Bayard relays the events of the story many years later.

Compared to many writers, Faulkner’s sentence structure is long and drawn out, making the story appear more complicated. The novel’s themes and storylines are relatively simple, but the intricate writing makes the narrative difficult to understand. A wise, old

The era of Reconstruction was a fourteen-year period following the Civil War filled with political and constitutional strife, extreme suffering, grand political ambitions and huge turns in race relations and human rights (Blight 32). During this period, many Americans realized that remembering the war “became, with time, easier than struggling over the enduring ideas for which those battles had been fought” (Blight 31). To people such as Frederick Douglass, a reborn United States could not

In April of 1861, the Civil War broke out in America, a war that was heavily based on the difference of opinion about slavery. The article Land of Contradiction by Justin Martin shows the experience of a traveling undercover journalist, Frederick Law Olmsted, who writes about the South, as he encounters new people and observes different lifestyles. Readers are able to see the South’s way of living through the use of slaves, but through the eyes of a Northerner. This helps with the understanding of the mindset of the Northerners when opposed to the South, which are the root feelings for the start of the war. As Olmsted was undercover, he was able to get up and close with the Southerners, revealing many secrets about the South that suggest why Southerners acted the way they did prior to the war, and why their economic status declined after the war. Through this article, one may understand the different views that were present during the civil war about the South’s harsh treatment of slaves, creating the understanding of the issue

White southerners are characterized alike to that of the released slaves in Cobb’s excerpt. They felt “conquered, ruined, impoverished, and oppressed” when they “returned to their quiet homes under the plighted faith of a soldier’s honor that they should be protected so long as they observed the obligations imposed upon them of peaceful law-abiding citizens.” They were dispossessed “of [their] property and ruined in [their] estates by the results of the war. They had hardly anything to look forward to with a “gloomier future” in the near future.

Roark looks at slavery during the war from a solely White Southerner perspective. He paints a picture of what Southern planters promulgated concerning slavery before and during the Civil War, but he never discusses the day to day lives of slaves from any other perspective. He acknowledges that Northerners believed Negros in the North had better lives than those in the South, but he never discusses how slaves themselves felt about slavery, or what Northern Negros thought of their socioeconomic status. Furthermore, Roark’s writing shows that White “affection” toward slaves only lasted if slave loyalty and behavior continued in a positive manner. The shock Southern plantation owners received when their slaves deserted or misbehaved

To say the past never dies is to say the past is always relevant, and to say the past hasn’t even passed is to say the past is relevant today. It’s fair to assume Faulkner’s words were meant to evoke the idea that the lessons and contexts of our history often impact the decisions we make today.

2.Billinglea, O. Fathers and Sons: The Spiritual Quest in Faulkner's 'Barn Burning. Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Culture 44.3 (Summer 1991).

Southern literature often focuses on the significance of family, one’s role within society, justice, race relations, and the ownership of land and laboring on it. These themes are greatly highlighted in William Faulkner’s short story, Barn Burning. The condition of the Snopes is representative of the circumstances that virtually subjugated many black and white laborers after the civil war. The setting of poor Southern workers succeeding the Reconstruction Era is an ideal environment for exploring one of the themes of Barn Burning: unfair societal roles.

Oxford provided Faulkner with intimate access to the rich character of the rural south which was conscious of its past and separated from the urban-industrial mainstream that Faulkner found very distracting. He wanted to accurately portray life in the south and he “could not have done otherwise than to include Blacks among the people who inhabit the lands of his novels”(Glissant, pp. 56). Faulkner did not pretend to understand the suffering and complexity of the lives of the black community but, because he grew up witnessing their struggle he was able to represent them in an honest and sometimes brutal fashion. He spent his whole life in the south and, “Blacks lived there … They were servants in the Falkner family or perhaps workers for the railroad company founded by his great grand-father. They were surely mule drivers or farm laborers …”(Urgo and Abadie, pp. 137). It is difficult to say whether or not Faulkner felt sympathy for these people but it is clear through Faulkner’s writing that he believed their story needed to be told.

Throughout the piece, Faulkner works to show the conflict that exists between the future and the past and the tension that is felt by those involved. Rather than evidently telling us, Faulkner presents this idea more broadly by including several important symbols for us to recognize and understand as the story develops.

By focusing on the figure of Caddy, Bleikasten’s essay works to understand the ambiguous nature of modern literature, Faulkner’s personal interest in Caddy, and the role she plays as a fictional character in relation to both her fictional brothers and her actual readers. To Bleikasten, Caddy seems to function on multiple levels: as a desired creation; as a fulfillment of what was lacking in Faulkner’s life; and/or as a thematic, dichotomous absence/presence.

Rebuilding the lives of the American people is shown in Faulkner’s advancements in the rut the southerns can’t climb out of. In the opening of Faulkner’s novel he sets the scene of a old musty room, shut up for years and in it’s old tradition will not be reopened anytime soon. Quentin describes this room further, “…the blinds all closed and fastened forty-three summers…yellow slashes full of dust motes…flakes of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward…” (3) the old South being in fragments. The symbolism of this defines the opening statements as well as in the closing. The war has left America in shambles but in this house the refection of that loss is in the walls, in the blinds shut in for years with no hope of being opened to see the sunlight or hope cast in. The blinds are keeping these

The book Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the film Gone with the Wind share an exuberance of similarities whilst using the perspectives of both a slave and his master. They both, in detail, show that slavery was extremely popular and successful in the Southernmost states in the US. It was indeed considered a lifestyle of many in the nation. In the eyes of author Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind was the “Southern response to the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. Mitchell depicts life in the South as a nirvana for highly profitable Caucasian southerners on their plantations where African Americans were more than happy to take a subsidiary role to satisfy their owners. It was an inaccurate portrayal of the time period. On the Other hand, Uncle Tom’s Cabin told the horrifying, but true story of the brutal slavery that took a toll on the South. Although these two works show very different perspectives and tell two totally diverse stories there are many similarities to be shown.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: “WHO WAS THE WOMAN?” FEMININE SPACE AND SHAPING OF INDETITY IN “THE SOUND AND THE FURY”